Conservatives find Trump’s religious liberty order lacking
Churches get leeway on political activism
Before a crowd of priests, nuns and faith leaders, President Trump promised the executive order he signed Thursday would take “historic steps to protect religious liberty,” but religious conservatives who supported his candidacy wanted more.
Activists called the executive order Trump signed in the Rose Garden on the National Day of Prayer a mere shadow of a draft that leaked this year and woefully inadequate. “President Trump must continue to work to protect religious freedom,” said Paul Weber, president of the Family Policy Alliance.
Trump’s executive order targeted the Johnson Amendment, a provision of tax law that prohibits churches from getting directly involved in political campaigns and that has long chafed some evangelical activists.
The order stopped short of Trump’s vow to “totally destroy” the amendment, instead instructing the Internal Revenue Service to enforce the law consistent with how it’s done so in the past — allowing speech on political and moral issues as long as it doesn’t advocate the election or defeat of a particular candidate. Only Congress can change the law to allow churches to endorse candidates without losing their tax-exempt status.
The Executive Order on Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty aims to make it easier for employers with religious objections not to include contraception coverage in work- ers’ health care plans, although it would be up to federal agencies to determine how that would happen.
Vowing to fight what he called discrimination against religious people and institutions, Trump said, “We will not allow people of faith to be targeted, bullied or silenced anymore.”
Though Trump promised “the federal government will never, ever penalize any person for their protected religious beliefs,” activists weren’t convinced they would avoid punishment for expressing religious or moral views.
Citing an Agriculture Department order that required a Michigan meatpacking plant to remove literature objecting to same-sex marriage from a break room in 2015, Gregory Baylor, a senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, said Trump’s order offers “no specific relief ” to people “threatened with the effective closure of their family-run business for simply expressing a religious point of view on marriage that differed from that of the federal government.”
Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson, who led dozens of conservative lawmakers last month in a letter urging the administration to move forward with the more farreaching executive order, said the final version fails to roll back “some of the worst progressive mandates from the Obama era.”
Davidson said protections are needed for religious organizations, military chaplains, schools, federal contractors and schools with a religious mission, and he promised to try to address that through legislation.
Weber from the Family Policy Alliance said he wants to make sure that health care entities are not obligated to provide gender transition therapies and that women’s homeless shelters are not required to admit transgender people.
Some influential religious conservatives praised Trump for paying special attention to the issue. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, called the order a “good first step.”